Last night Joe Biden gave his first prime-time address as President of the United States. The speech, which was both cautionary and encouraging in tone, focused on the coronavirus pandemic, the progress the United States has made, and the challenges that remain for the country that had the worst Covid-19 experience in the world.
As of today, the US has had 29.9 million coronavirus cases and over 530,000 fatalities. Daily infections started going down around mid-January after hitting an all-time peak of over 308,000 infections on January 8. The numbers have gone down consistently since Biden stepped into office as his administration has ramped up vaccination efforts and asked for mask mandates.
From the onset, Biden set a goal of having at least 100 million doses administered in his first 100 days as President. The US currently sits at 95.7 million jabs given, of which around 20 million were administered during Trump’s time in office.
This means that Biden achieved 75% of his goal in just 50 days. He stated last night that his administration will fulfill its promise and go above it, setting May 1 as the ideal deadline by which all Americans will have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Note that the US is currently working with three vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.
How does this compare to other countries? The United Kingdom has administered about 24 million doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines. Though the total number is lower than that of the United States, the UK has a smaller population. The United Kingdom has a rating of 35 doses administered per 100 people, which is higher than the US (29).
The UK is first among the G7 countries, while the US is second when it comes to the percentage of the population that has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
The European Union is lagging far behind both the United States and the United Kingdom. It has administered around 42.8 million doses of the vaccine in the EU/EEA area. With a total population of over 515 million people, this number appears insignificant, especially considering not all countries within the union are vaccinating at the same rate.
For instance, the relatively small island country of Malta has a vaccination rate of 23 doses per 100 people, while major economies such as France and Germany are administering 8.8 and 9.8 doses per 100 people, respectively.
The only G7 country outside of Europe and North America, Japan, is doing worse still. It has administered under 200,000 doses, which means less than 1% of the Japanese population has been vaccinated with at least one dose.
Why is the vaccination rate of these countries important to investors? Simply put, a quick and effective vaccination campaign is linked to a faster return to normalcy, which means economic growth and prosperity. The recent steepening in the yield curve on US treasuries and the persistent strength of the pound throughout 2021 are proof enough that the countries who are vaccinating more people faster are inspiring more confidence among investors.
Nevertheless, thanks to new Covid-19 local variants and their potential resilience to the existing Covid-19 vaccines, it is impossible to predict when the pandemic will end exactly. In his speech, Joe Biden promised (or at least tried to inspire Americans to hope) that this July 4th everyone might be celebrating with their families and that things will have gone back to normal by then.
But as the above-mentioned data suggests, a normal summer, or even a normal remainder of 2021 might not be attainable for every country. Some will take longer to recover and their economies will fall behind in the process.
